For Google, the Browser Does It All

Thursday

Nov 25, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 26, 2010 at 5:08 AM

The company said it will introduce a lightweight netbook computer that runs Chrome by the end of the year.

CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — When a Google engineer gave top executives computers running the company’s new Chrome operating system, Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, tried to hold on to his computer running an older version.

“I reached to take the old one, and he reaches to grab it,” recalled Linus Upson, the vice president for engineering in charge of Chrome. “Then he realizes, ‘I don’t need it.’ ”

That is because Chrome stores everything that people have on their computers — like documents, photos and e-mail — online, or in tech parlance, in the cloud. In Google’s vision of a world where all computers run on its Chrome OS, anyone can walk up to any computer with an Internet connection and gain access to all their information.

If Mr. Brin was momentarily confused, it is no wonder that Google users and analysts are struggling to wrap their heads around what Google is trying to do with Chrome.

It is all the more confusing because Google already has a Web browser named Chrome. And Google already has an operating system, called Android.

Google says it will become clearer by the end of the year, when the company will introduce to the public a lightweight netbook computer that runs Chrome. Though Google declined to give details of the device, it is expected to be manufactured by another company and branded by Google, similar to the way Google released its Nexus phone, which runs on Android.

Google has high hopes for Chrome, and as the company weathers criticism for relying too much on search advertising for revenue, its executives have been describing Chrome as one of Google’s new businesses with huge potential.

With Chrome OS, Google is stepping once again into the territory of its archrivals, Microsoft and Apple, both of which make operating systems as well as widely used desktop software like Microsoft Office and Apple iPhoto and iTunes.

That software would not work on Chrome computers. Instead, Chrome users would use Google’s Web-based products, like Docs, Gmail and Picasa for word processing, e-mail and photos, or software from other companies, like Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365. Google also plans to open a Chrome app store for software developers to dream up other Chrome tools.

The Chrome browser, which is installed on 8 percent of all PCs, shares a name because the operating system is, essentially, the same thing as the browser. “When people look at Chrome OS, they’re going to be like, ‘It’s just a browser, there’s nothing exciting here,’ ” Mr. Upson said. “Exactly. It’s just a browser, there’s nothing exciting here — that’s the point.”

Computers running Chrome OS will start in seconds, not minutes, and then users will see a browser through which applications and data can be used.

Yet while Google imagines a Web-based future, analysts wonder whether Chrome’s time has passed — before Google netbooks even hit the market.

When Google first talked about Chrome last year, netbooks — small, low-cost laptops with keyboards — were all the rage. But since then, smartphones and tablets — slate PCs with touch screens, like the iPad — have crushed that market.

“When Google made their decision early on with the Chrome OS project, Android was in its infancy and the tablet market didn’t really exist,” said Ray Valdes, a research vice president at Gartner who studies Internet platforms. “Now things have changed, and I think Google is likely recalibrating its strategy and product mix to take that into account.”

Google’s hugely successful Android operating system for mobile phones and tablets adds a level to the confusion. Chrome and Android are built by separate Google teams and the company says there is no conflict between the two. But its executives acknowledge they are not entirely sure how the two will coexist.

“We don’t want to call the question and say this one does one thing, this one does another,” said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. “So far the model seems to be the Android solution is particularly optimized for things that involve touch in some form and Chrome OS appears to be for keyboard-based solutions.”

But Mr. Upson said that Chrome OS would be a computing platform stretching to hand-held devices, tablets and TVs. “We are starting with laptops and we will expand in both directions,” he said.

“Google hasn’t told a great story about how Chrome and Android live relative to each other,” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner research director studying consumer applications. “It’s incumbent upon Google to start telling a story that makes sense. It gets to the point of confusion that you have a lot of folks saying, ‘What’s Steve Jobs’s phone number again?’ ”

Yet another source of puzzlement: even though Google has been promoting both Chrome and Android as new big businesses, they are free and open-source, meaning that hardware manufacturers don’t have to pay Google to use them on devices, and software developers don’t have to pay to use them to build their own operating systems or browsers.

That actually makes perfect sense, said Sundar Pichai, vice president for product management with Chrome, because Google makes almost all its revenue from things people do on browsers.

“These are enablers — platforms on which people use Google services,” Mr. Pichai said. “Both offer benefits in terms of how people can use services easily and increase usage, and that gives them a better experience and over all generates more revenue for us.”

Though some people might worry about storing their private information on Google’s servers instead of their own computers, Google says Chrome is safer because security updates happen automatically and if people lose their computers, their data is inaccessible once they reset their passwords.

Mr. Upson says that 60 percent of businesses could immediately replace their Windows machines with computers running Chrome OS. He also says he hopes it will put corporate systems administrators out of work because software updates will be made automatically over the Web. But the vast majority of businesses still use desktop Microsoft Office products and cannot imagine moving entirely to Web-based software or storing sensitive documents online — at least not yet.

Even if Google missed the netbook craze, it may in fact be ahead of its time in imagining a Web-based future, Mr. Gartenberg said. “Android, where everything is very application-dependent, is a response to the things that are here today,” he said. “Chrome is preparing for a future when everything can be delivered through the Web.”

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